This invention relates to an improvement in a liquid crystal device utilizing an electro-optic effect, and more particularly to a liquid crystal device utilizing the birefringence possessed by liquid crystal molecules, in other words, the characteristic that the refractive index of the light is different in the direction of the major axis and that perpendicular thereto at the liquid crystal molecules.
Recently, the liquid crystal device applying the electro-optic effect exhibited by the liquid crystal has been widely used as display devices for numeral display panels of wrist watches or electric calculators and also is expected to be developed in application to the field of electro-optic, for example, electro-optic shutters used in cameras or electro-optic scanners for printers, other than the display devices.
However, in a case that the electro-optic effect of conventional liquid crystal device is used to actuate, for example, the electro-optic shutter, the orientations of liquid crystal in two directions to form the ON or OFF condition of the transmission light are so different that one orientation is to apply the electric field between the opposite electrodes to thereby forcibly change the alignment of liquid crystal molecules existing between both the electrodes, while, the other depends only on molecule orientation on a basis of the initial alignment of the same. Hence, the response speed of liquid crystal is extremely slow as several tens to several hundreds msec and interception of the light is not complete, resulting in that such conventional liquid crystal device has been impossible to be put to practical use as the electro-optic shutter.